Sat down and finished a couple of side quests in Horizon Forbidden West. I thought HZD was very modern Tomb Raider like in the sense of exploration and crafting. But in the sequel there are more hidden caves to find, and lots of swimming. I’ve already found a couple of areas that will require special equipment before I can continue, but at least I did a couple of mining quests.
Remember Aperture Tag?
I can’t even remember the last time I tried to play Aperture Tag, but I’m farther than I made it on my previous attempt. I made it to the 4th Chapter before taking a break. This is the Portal 2 mod that people got pissy about because you had to pay for it, which was a bit of a controversy when it first released. It wasn’t really that expensive ($6) when it first came out, but my beef with it at the time was that it kept crashing under Linux way back in the day.
My only other complaints now are the autosave feature; in regular Portal 2 you can save at any given time, and you can also do that with Aperture Tag BUT… it will only load your most recent save, and that has almost screwed me a couple of times. Sometimes it will automatically save while you’re in midair for example, possibly over pools of acid. There’s also no cloud saving capability, meaning if I want to play this between the Steam Deck and the TV PC that I’ll have to manually copy the saves… meh.
I’ll probably just make an effort to play it on just the Desktop… in due time, of course.
Under The Digital Moon
We strolled through a bit of Resonite this evening. It’s been a good while since we’ve gone on a search for new toys and maps. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to produce any of it into a video, but it was a nice little bit of escapism. Speaking of Resonite, I did go through some footage for it yesterday, and I almost have enough distilled to make something interesting!
Toys of Resonite
We document some of the toys/items we found in Resonite! Some of them are really cool, or really cursed.
Palworld Footage Is In The Can!
Another evening, another video exported and ready to add to my queue! I distilled two different Palworld sessions into a little over two minutes of our most fun moments from when we still played without mods. It’ll be a refreshing change from all the Resonite vids, which I still have plenty of footage to go through also. 😛 I’m thinking of going through some more recordings tomorrow, then maybe one of the many games I haven’t played in awhile that may or may not make me rage.
Evening Open Thread
Not really feeling it this evening. Been feeling a bit yuck after getting home today, been mostly kicking back and taking it easy. Even thinking of gaming right now makes me dizzy. I might call it an early night to get some extra rest with the hope this all calms itself in the morning.
Open Thread.
Something Something Production Post
I’ve been sorting through the Palworld footage that piled up recently, and I’m already getting some fun ideas. Last night I took some audio from the game recording and extracted it for use in Audacity. Now I’m doing a small bit of animating with it. Nothing big, but it will give anyone watching something too look at if they make it that far.
I know I pretty much say this after ANY upgrade I do, but so far this has been the best one! Working with video has been speedy. Fast enough that I haven’t needed to use proxy as much, and dragging/deleting things on the timelines in Shotcut has been met with little to no delay. I no longer have to remux my recordings from mkv to mp4, and can just export the final project without the bullshittery I had to do before to get it to work. 🙂
A Familiar Voice In The Forbidden West
Played a bit of Horizon Forbidden West to unwind a little, and I was surprised to hear a familiar voice! Not from the previous game, but actually from a whole other game universe entirely.
When wandering into a settlement called Chainscrape, I met someone by the name of Javad The Willing. Listening to his voice was like a mixture of Barney Calhoun and GMan of the Half-Life series, and sometimes I get curious if the voice sounds familiar or similar to other characters. Sure enough, he’s voiced by Mike Shapiro. To make things funnier you talk more with him in the local tavern where he’s enjoying that beer he owes someone in another game universe.
That was pretty cool. 🙂
A Very Zen Open Thread
Today I spent it focusing on doing the things I like. Lazily waking up in bed and doing a little reading, making an awesome Japanese Curry breakfast, some video editing (which has been smooth on the new setup btw), chatting with a good friend and spending a little over an hour as a ninja while said friend did Dragon things in another game. There’s a mission in Aragami 2 that I’ve been putting it off, but tonight I finished it without killing anyone. I didn’t have much time to start another mission afterwards, so I practiced my murder skills in a different level that I already finished, mostly stabbing.
Typical therapeutic way to spend the last of my weekend. 😛
Another Grind Ends (9 Years of Shadows)
I’m happy to say this is my first game to beat in 2025! I spent last night grinding the final boss battle. It was intense, and I had to take breaks before grinding all my teeth to fine powder, but I persevered and laid claim to the final boss! I did miss one entry on the bestiary. Once I do that I’ll be able to uninstall it from my Steam Deck, and my 40TB Desktop…